The Yellow Wallpaper

Looks kinda like what the author and narrator was imagining, doesn't it?

            So what we have here is a first person narrative story revolving around a woman and yellow wallpaper. The story begins off rather simple, with the first day being set in as the expository. That being said, what is being exposed to the reader is that the woman is taking to writing about her ventures on her summer vacation from life. According to the woman, she is on vacation and is not to work until she is feeling completely better - because of a simple nervous condition that her husband and brother deems is "really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency (266)." Yet the troubling antagonist in this story appears not to be the condition but the yellow wallpaper. No matter how many times the reader is convinced that the nervous condition is growing ever out of control, the author kindly reminds the reader that it is primarily the yellow wallpaper, and the millions of creeping ladies in the pattern that are frightening, that are enticing her. There are people that keep her in check, especially the husband and his sister, to make sure that she is not writing, for the narrator "verily believes she thinks it is the writing which made me sick (269)." Unconditionally, the writing is meant to be a tool of expression and it appears that the narrator feels confined enough to want to write, and with the need to avoid her watchers. This confining causes her to express, but the application of expression allows her vivid imagination to run wild - thus allowing the creeping woman to come out in the day. The creeping woman is, again, one of the creations of the narrator and as well a sign of her degrading mentality. But again the author forces the narration to appear that she is feeling well until next mention of the creeping lady out in the yards. Ultimately, however, the nervous depression turns into a depravity and insanity. It seems that there is still some conscious separation between herself and the imagined woman in the walls when she states "I don't blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight 276)!" and then contradicts it by stating "I always lock the door when I creep by daylight. I can't do it at night, for I know John would suspect something at once (276)." And when she finally snaps, it is when she flees to the wall and "peeled off yards of that paper (277)." The ending, however morbid, shows that she had lost her personality however. "I've got out at last," said I, "in spite of you and Jane. And I've pulled off most of the paper, so you can't put me back!" and she continues to creep by the wall, right over the fainted body of her husband. So inevitably, what is the limit of sanity, here? It appears to me that the yellow wallpaper and the imagined woman is the symbol of her degrading sanity, a sort of a gauge for the reader to see.